"Lovely Wars"
by Chitose SAKURA
ISBN# 4-08-847128-8
Margaret Comics, 1999

Yep, it was the cute cover that got me :) He looks sufficiently cool and bishounen for me (perhaps it is the leather jacket! :), and she looks cute and un-annoying (well yeah, her yes are HUGE!)^_^ The art style also looked pretty familiar, but it turns out I didn't have anything else by her after all. The art is very nice. It has a definite shoujo-ish feel to it, with light, delicate lines and swirly hair. This volume contains 2 short, complete stories. This manga has many of my favorite shoujo manga themes in it! Romance (well ok, that is pretty much a given in shoujo manga), cool bishounen, cross dressing, twins, etc. It's so much fun! The first story is about twins, the brother-sister pair of Nanako and Natarou.

For reasons I can't figure out yet, Natarou begs his sister to trade places with him for just one week. WHAT? But they aren't identical twins, they are brother-sister! Apparently in the world of manga, all it takes is the right wig, and any set of twins can look identical! (see Mint na Bokura!) Anyway, Nanako finally agrees, and gets herself a short hair wig and borrows Natarou's clothing and moves into Natarou's dorm. Natarou gets himself a long hair wig and wears Nanako's school uniform. Tadah, instant switch! Things for Nanako get strange though as she meets Natarou's friends. Natarou is a pretty small guy, and apparently some of the older, bigger guys at school have sort of adopted natarou as a mascot. They protect him from others. Nanako thinks they are very good looking guys! But then she meets Natarou's roommate! Now THIS is a cute guy! His name is Dai-chan, and he is very affectionate towards 'Natarou'. Nanako freaks out when she meets Dai-chan though because he is so cute, and she has to live with him for a whole week! She does her best to pretend to be her brother, but there starts to grow a slight tension between the two as Nanako begins to really like Dai-chan. And poor Dai-chan wonders why he suddenly seems to like his roommate a lot more than he used to... yeah you can see where this is going. It is sort of like 'Hanazakari no Kimitachi e' but compacted into a very short story. The second story is cute as well. It is about a girl and the guy she likes, and the cooler, more beautiful girl who has dibs on him first :) But who does the guy like? :) Yeah, shoujo manga is fun!

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